Twenty-five years ago: The night Lafayette slayed Notre Dame

On Jan. 4, 1988, the Leopards stunned the Fighting Irish 83-68 at Kirby Field House

Lafayette's Andy Wescoe, an Allen High School grad, said he could… (FILE PHOTO, MORNING CALL )

January 01, 2013|By Jeff Schuler, Of The Morning Call

Until last March 16, when the Lehigh men's basketball team upset powerhouse Duke in the NCAA Tournament, the biggest upset in local college basketball history took place in a jam-packed Kirby Field House on the campus of Lafayette College 25 years ago Friday.

Many in the third sellout crowd in the building's history, listed at 4,200 fans, were there to cheer the visitors.

"There were probably as many Notre Dame hats and jackets in evidence as there was Lafayette regalia," Morning Call sports writer Coult Aubrey wrote in his story the following day.

The Fighting Irish, under the direction of coach Richard "Digger" Phelps, were fresh off a Sweet 16 season with aspirations of returning to the NCAA Tournament. It was, and still is, Notre Dame's only local men's basketball appearance.

Led by All-American point guard David Rivers, Notre Dame came to Easton on Jan. 4, 1988, with a 7-2 record, losing only to defending national champion Indiana (at the Hoosier Dome) and at DePaul in overtime. Among their seven victims so far were Louisville and La Salle, the latter two nights earlier at the Palestra.

Coach Butch van Breda Kolff's Leopards, who hadn't played since Dec. 12, were only 3-4, beating Colgate, Moravian and Yale. They had lost by four at Rutgers, but were blown out by 25 points at Seton Hall, and were coming off back-to-back losses at Columbia and at Manhattan before the Christmas break.

Very few people gave Lafayette a chance.

Van Breda Kolff felt otherwise.

"Just after our shoot-around that morning, van Breda Kolff sat us down and told us, 'We can beat this team,' " said Andy Wescoe, an Allen grad who had just broken into the Leopards starting lineup as a sophomore. "He said we matched up well with them, and to beat them we needed to rebound and control the tempo. He felt it, and he instilled in us the confidence that we could win it."

As Aubrey wrote the next morning, this Wednesday evening on College Hill "was a Leopard show all the way."

Behind a monster game from junior Otis Ellis, the Leopards recorded their biggest regular-season win in school history, thumping the Fighting Irish 83-68 for their only victory in the eight-game series between the two schools.

The Morning Call's Don Bostrom reported that van Breda Kolff, the first coach in history to take a college team to the Final Four and an NBA team to the finals, "savored" the stunner by popping three aspirin to take care of a headache.

"This is the first headache I've ever gotten in a game,' VBK told Bostrom. "Man, was it loud in there."

"It was a madhouse," Wescoe recalled 25 years later. "Easton always has been great to us as far as supporting the program, but c'mon, this was Notre Dame. The crowd was probably 50/50. But it was interesting to see how the crowd shifted as we continued to play well."

Notre Dame led just once, at 10-7 with 14:47 left in the first half. Lafayette led 37-33 at halftime, then doubled that lead to 45-37 over the opening five minutes of the second half. From there the Leopards pulled away, four times building the advantage to the final 15-point margin.

"You could tell at a certain point in the first half that they knew they were in for a game, and they tried to turn up the intensity," Wescoe said of the Irish. "We could see it in their eyes; they were questioning themselves. We were able to frustrate them and keep them off balance, and we shot real well that night, too. We had them where we wanted; we were at our best when teams had to try to chase us and we could spread our offense around and move the ball and find the open man."

Lafayette shot 57 percent (24-for-42) from the field while holding the Irish to only 35.4 percent (23-for-65). Aubrey reported that the Leopards had so much success inside and on the wings that they took just three 3-pointers — Notre Dame was 4-for-16 from behind the arc.

Ellis, a 6-foot-6 junior from Philadelphia, had 35 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, handed out four assists, blocked two shots and had three steals. He missed just two of his 14 shots from the floor.

"Notre Dame had a forward from Philadelphia [Mark Stevenson from Roman Catholic] who Otis played against a lot growing up, and he felt he was every bit as good as him," Wescoe said.

The Leopards' "big" man, 6-7 sophomore Matt Roberts of Emmaus, battled the Irish 6-9 trio of Gary Voce, Scott Paddock and Keith Robinson inside, scoring 14 points (he averaged 9.8 points for the season) with seven assists, five of them in the second half. Although he had just one rebound, Roberts, Wescoe's roommate throughout college, was cited by van Breda Kolff for "[keeping] their big men off the boards by boxing out."

"They outplayed us," Phelps, who began his head coaching career at St. Gabriel's High School in Hazleton, told Aubrey.